Mysteries of Halebeedu Temple

Who invented telescope? Most of you might say Galileo. But it's not true.Though Galileo was first one to use Telescope for astronomy and discovered many wonderful things. 

The earliest record of an existing telescope is from a patent application in Holland on 2 October 1608. The application was made by Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershay (sometimes found as Lipperhey). 

But that's about patent, how will you react when I say telescope was used more than thousands year back in India?

Lockdown had restricted our movements to intrastate only and after spending days after days at home, we broke loose and traveled to Halebeedu and Belur to witness poetry in stones.

Halebeedu is 250 km from Bangalore, 4 hrs drive on excellent national highway. Halebbedu was capital of Hoysala empire in the 12the century and home to some of the best Hoysala architecture. Hoysaleswara temple is one of it.

Built during 11th century, Hoysaleswara temple was funded by King Vishnuwardhana and temple was built on the bank of lake. Hoysaleswara temple is one of the most beautiful temple I have seen. The carvings on the outer walls are not just beautiful but detailed to perfection. We decided to hire guide, so that we get complete information and we were not disappointed. Guide was really good, explained us story, myth behind every carving and its significance. 

The one such carving.

You can clearly see, its scene of war and one person trying to see enemies from distance using telescope kind of device. so if Galileo used this and Hans patented this in 16th century then what's this device doing at 11th century temple? 

Important thing to note, though this temple was built in 11th century the deception of all the scenes are from Mahabharata, Ramayana. Clearly ancient people in India were aware of telescope device and using it. 

Another thing I noticed while seeing carvings of many war scenes is the usage of missile. If you look carefully you could see the weapon used was similar to modern world missile. 

The temples of India has so many evidences of modern devices being used by ancient Indian, sadly not highlighted or credited enough.

Another carving that caught my attention was beautifully depiction of Mahabharata war where Chakravyuh (multi tier military formation) was shown and Arjuna's son Abhimanyu was trying to break it.

The entire outer wall of temple has many such beautiful carving and one has to spend consider amount of time to go through each and every carving, understand its significance but honestly its worth spending time.